Garrett Hardin

Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) was an American ecologist and microbiologist who wrote on human overpopulation and is best known for his 1968 Science essay The Tragedy of the Commons. He took a zoology degree at the University of Chicago in 1936 and a doctorate in microbiology at Stanford in 1941, then taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was Professor of Human Ecology from 1963 until his nominal retirement in 1978. His essay argued that individuals acting freely on a shared resource can ruin it for everyone, an idea that has been widely influential and also widely criticised, notably by Elinor Ostrom and by historians of common land. He later published Living Within Limits in 1993. He held strongly restrictive positions on immigration and supported eugenics, views that have led several sources to describe him as a white nationalist.